Description
This paper contends that Peace and Conflict Studies (usually seen as a sub-discipline of IR) has a significant bias towards the recent and the contemporary. This a-historicity means that significant evidence is overlooked in our analyses. The paper draws on a preliminary survey of contemporary Peace and Conflict Studies literature and makes the case that a significant evidential trail is lost by restricting many of our analyses to the post-Cold War era. The final section of the paper employs a particular genre of historical record (war memoirs and personal war diaries) to make the point that historical analyses and case studies offer much to the study of contemporary peace and conflict. As a result claims about the novelty of the current era are to be treated with circumspection.
